iPhone X Clone Revealed at MWC 2018, and It Even Copies the ‘Notch’

Apple's design is catching on.

Apple may be onto something with the “notch.” The Leagoo S9, on display at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress on Monday, appears to have a fair few design flairs in common with the iPhone X that launched last November. At just $150, this Android smartphone comes in at a fraction of the price of the $999 Apple flagship.

The S9 has a 5.85-inch display, complete with notch, running Android 8.1 Oreo. It uses the Sony rear dual cameras, one 13-megapixel sensor and the other two megapixels, to offer 65-megapixel “Ultra HD” photos, while an OV-manufactured eight-megapixel shooter lies on the front. It has 4GB of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage, powered by a 1.5GHz eight-core processor. Face and fingerprint scanners can unlock the phone in just 0.1 seconds, but it’s unclear whether the phone somehow manages to use the same Microsoft Kinect-like sensor Apple packed into the top of the X.

Releasing a phone called the S9 at the same conference that Samsung also announced the Galaxy S9 is a bold move, but perhaps even bolder is its decision to copy one of the strangest features of the iPhone X. The notch isn’t exactly beloved by fans, but there’s a small chance that rocking the S9 will trick your friends into thinking that you shelled out for the X. That is, until they see the big “Leagoo” logo on the bottom.

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Leagoo S9.

Other than its price, Leagoo is touting its Android operating system and high battery life as reasons to buy. The phone falls under Leagoo’s “Real Power” branding, which touts 35 percent more battery life than regular phones. In its explainer of the feature, Leagoo says the company uses solutions like a highly-optimized operating system that boosts multitasking efficiency by 25 percent, as well as an image processor that reduces the power needed for taking photos. In the case of the S9, the phone packs a 3,300 mAh battery, notably larger than the X’s 2,716 mAh pack. Whether the S9 actually delivers long battery life in real-world testing is another issue, but Apple’s famed optimization of hardware and software has allowed it to offer 12 hours of internet use on a smaller cell size than its competitors.